Holbrook's Gamecocks win regional

COLUMBIA, S.C. — South Carolina coach Chad Holbrook said before the Columbia Regional that defense and pitching are the keys to winning in the postseason.

Scoring a lot of runs will do the trick as well.

The Gamecocks finished off a three-game sweep of the Columbia Regional on Monday afternoon with a 6-4 victory over Liberty. The game was halted Sunday evening due to rain and lightning and resumed at 1:05 p.m. Monday.

South Carolina scored 32 runs over the three games, averaging more than 10 per contest.

“Our pitching staff has been very, very good all year long, and if we score over five runs in a game our percentages are pretty high that we win,” said Holbrook, a Shelby native. “We swung the bat well all weekend. We had some good at-bats. I felt like over the course of the season we were forcing our pitching staff to be perfect too much. In other words, we weren’t doing enough for our pitching staff. This weekend we did enough.”

The 32 runs were the most USC has scored during a three-game stretch in the postseason since scoring 32 against Wofford and Charlotte in the Columbia Regional in 2007.

As a team, the Gamecocks hit .345 with four home runs and six doubles in the three games.

“They probably swung it better in this regional than they have all year,” Liberty coach Jim Toman said. “They seem to be hitting everyone and it’s a good time for them to get hot. They’ve been through it before and they know what it takes late and they got it done. Give them credit. I thought they did a great job of swinging it in the tournament, there’s no doubt about that.”

With the win, South Carolina pushed its postseason home winning streak to 27 games. The Gamecocks are a perfect 16-0 at Carolina Stadium in the postseason.

South Carolina also reached its 11th super regional in the past 14 seasons with the victory.

Holbrook, who was an assistant under current athletic director Ray Tanner, accomplished the feat in his first season as a head coach.

“This program means a lot to a lot of people,” Holbrook said. “The fact now that this is 11 super regional appearances in 14 years is an incredible accomplishment. I was lucky to be a part of it as an assistant coach and obviously, yeah, this is special for me in my first year, but I’m as happy as I could be for our players.”

Kyle Martin was named the regional’s most outstanding player, while Grayson Greiner, Joey Pankake, Tanner English, Graham Saiko and Jordan Montgomery joined Martin as Gamecocks on the all-tournament team.

Martin hit .500 with a home run and six RBIs during the three games. Greiner hit .556, while Saiko and English both homered and doubled. Saiko added five RBIs, while English had four.

Jordan Montgomery pitched seven scoreless innings and struck out a career-high 11 batters in USC’s second game of the regional.

Holbrook said he was happy with the entire team’s play during the tournament.

“The energy in our dugout this weekend was unlike the energy we’ve had in our dugout all year. I don’t know why. I got kind of mad at them to be honest with you because we’ve played a lot of important games during the year prior to this point. Our guys competed, they played hard. They were wanting to win, and they competed every pitch,” he said.

Carolina led 4-2 after 4.5 innings when play resumed on Monday and quickly added to its lead thanks to small ball.

Greiner singled to start the inning and later scored on a single by Saiko. After Saiko advanced to third on a sacrifice fly, English pushed a perfect bunt down the first-base line to score Saiko and give Carolina a four-run advantage.

“With how good they are offensively I didn’t feel comfortable at all with a two-run lead. I wanted to make it three or four if we could,” Holbrook said.

Carolina cruised from that point forward until the Flames cut the lead to 6-3 in the eighth inning with a double to left-center by Danny Grauer.

Things got shaky for the Gamecocks in the ninth when Liberty added a run to make it 6-4 and had runners at the corners with two outs and the go-ahead run at the plate.

“We kept telling our guys in the dugout that there’s no clock in baseball. They’ve got to get 27 outs. We were going to go down swinging and we did,” Toman said. “It would be great to be playing tonight, but hats off to Tyler Webb, who’s one of the best closers in the country. He got it done.”

Webb earned the save, while Colby Holmes got the win. Holmes pitched 1 1/3 innings, allowing two hits and no runs. Webb went 1 1/3, allowing two hits and one run. He struck out three.

Adam Westmoreland, who was pitching in the postseason for the first time, went 2 1/3 innings between Holmes and Webb and allowed two hits and one run while striking out three.

With two wins in the super regional, South Carolina would return to Omaha, Neb., for the College World Series. Holbrook said the Gamecocks have their sites locked on that target.

“You don’t want to finish playing in the super regional,” he said. “You want to keep going, and we’re two wins away from having the opportunity to play in the College World Series. Obviously that’s one of our goals at the beginning of the year and we’re not quite there yet.”